Rosalea's 2012 Staycation Part 2: By the Lake in Oakland, CA

Rosalea’s 2012 Staycation Part 2: A Stroll by
the Lake in Oakland, CA

The first wildlife refuge created in
North America (in 1870) is not in some wilderness; it is in
the heart of Oakland, California. A local luminary, Dr
Merritt, dammed up an outlet to an estuary on the Bay of San
Francisco, creating a brackish lake out of what was once a
salt marsh, then convinced the California legislature to
pass an Act protecting its fishy and flighty
inhabitants.

Click
for big version.“What’s that you say?
Roast goose? I don’t think so!” By the time this Canada
gosling is fully fledged, hundreds of waterfowl and shore
birds will be summering over on Lake
Merritt.

The best way to get to Lake Merritt from San Francisco is by
taking the NL bus across the Bay Bridge. Which is actually
two bridges—three, if you count the new eastern span
currently being built and which will open to traffic,
bicyclists and pedestrians in 2013. From the bridges, you
get a good sense of just how long the Bay is.

Ask to be
let off at either Perkins St, on the Lakeside Park side of
the lake, or at the Grand Lake cinema end. If you do the
latter, be sure to walk across the street to check out the
cinema’s marquee in case it has important information for
you:

On Saturdays, the
paved area opposite the theatre is home to a huge Farmers
Market. According to one of the perforated metal plates
providing drainage in that area, the market has been in
operation since 1999.

My little stroll
took place on a weekday, so I first had lunch at a
delightful Thai restaurant in a courtyard between the
theatre and the Post Office. Then I walked down the
Lakeshore side of the lake half a mile for dessert. Spicy
Thai chicken, tiramisu, and Americano coffee—aah, it’s
so good being on vacation!

Click
for big version.In the photo above,
Lakeside Park is visible on the opposite shore. The small
blue building on the water is the rowing club, one of the
many public recreation facilities on that side of the lake.
The lamp posts and string of lights go all the way around
the lake like an amber and pearl necklace.

My
path, however, was along the residential side of the lake,
with its mix of old and new apartment
buildings:

Near the beginning
of my walk was the beautiful Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic
church and, at the end of it, was the perplexingly named
Lakeside Temple of Practical Christianity, which looks
somewhat more substantial than Our Lady only because I was
closer when I took the photograph. (It perplexes me that
there is any option other than “practical”
Christianity.)

The walk around the
entire perimeter of the lake takes a couple of hours; a lot
more if you look in on the Gardens, the Rotary Nature
Center, and Children’s Fairyland in Lakeside Park.
There’s even a lawn bowling club. Along the way, you’ll
find interpretive signs that are part of an art project
named “Once Upon A Time, Happily Ever After”, which
started in 2009. The website for the project has downloadable audio that was originally
available on players people could borrow and listen to as
they strolled. Some of the signs also serve to orient you to
where you are:

Oakland’s famous
daughter Gertrude Stein, said of the city in
Everybody’s Autobiography (1937):

“...what was
the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to
have come from there yes write about it if I like or
anything if I like but not there, there is no there
there.” The “no there there” quote—which I most
recently saw on a huge billboard advertising mobile banking,
of all things—riles Oaklanders no end. Oaklandish folks
beg to differ, as this succinct cut out in the Farmers
Market drain attests:

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